Juul Labs Documents Collection for North Carolina: Related Resources

Big Vape is a 4 episode limited docuseries released in 2023 tells the story of the rise of the JUUL product and Juul Labs, while outlining their internal work and large societal impact. The documentary description details, "A scrappy electronic startup becomes a mutlibillion-dollar company until an epidemic causes its success to go up in smoke." The docuseries starts in the early 2000s with the idea development by Juul founders James Monsees and Adam Bowen during their time at Stanford University, and brings us to 2020 around the Congressional hearings to probe Juul Labs role in the youth vaping epidemic. 

The docuseries was based off the book Big Vape: The Incdendiary Rise of JUUL by Jamie Ducharme. 

Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of JUUL by Jamie Ducharme follows the development and process of Juul Labs and the JUUL product, and it's impact on public health in the United States. The publisher site describes the book - "It began with a smoke break. James Monsees and Adam Bowen were two ambitious graduate students at Stanford, and in between puffs after class they dreamed of a way to quit smoking. Their solution became the Juul, a sleek, modern device that could vaporize nicotine into a conveniently potent dosage. The company they built around that device, Juul Labs, would go on to become a $38 billion dollar company and draw blame for addicting a whole new generation of underage tobacco users. Time magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme follows Monsees and Bowen as they create Juul and, in the process, go from public health visionaries and Silicon Valley wunderkinds to two of the most controversial businessmen in the country. With rigorous reporting and clear-eyed prose that reads like a nonfiction thriller, Big Vape uses the dramatic rise of Juul to tell a larger story of big business, Big Tobacco, and the high cost of a product that was too good to be true." 

The book provides a strong deep dive on the work of Juul Labs, and sets a strong foundation for understanding the Juul Labs documents in the NC documents collection and in understanding the basis of the NC vs. Juul Labs lawsuit. 

The Devil's Playbook: Big Tobacco, JUUL, and The Addiction of a New Generation by Lauren Etter was published in 2021. The publisher's website describes the book - "The Devil’s Playbook is the inside story of how Juul’s embodiment of Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos wrought havoc on American health, how a beleaguered tobacco company was seduced by the promise of a new generation of addicted customers, and how Juul’s founders, board members, and employees walked away with a windfall." 

The research and analysis provided in The Devil's Playbook was discussed in the Big Vape Netflix Documentary and helps to frame the national societal impact of the vaping epidemic that was fueled by the work of Juul Labs.